Shilan Saqzi 

News Center — Every liberation struggle in modern history has been stained with blood and torture; no experience of liberation has ever been free of tragedy. More often than not, such movements were built—or collapsed—through these very tragedies. The question, then, is this: in the context of a war against dictatorship, amid mass killing and collective mourning, how should one confront this reality? What can be done to preserve humanity, hope, and the capacity for social resistance? 

In days when opposition media and profit-driven social networks inundate society with horrific images of destruction and grief, it becomes necessary to think objectively and simply about society and citizens’ mental health—even if this requires immediate and pragmatic solutions. The current situation must not turn a grieving people into walking corpses. 

Patterns of Liberation 

Experiences of liberation demonstrate that collective confrontation with genocide tends to evolve in two primary directions: either transforming mourning into a balanced political sphere—through the formation of collective institutions that demand justice, preserve memory, and honor victims—or sinking into intense grief and political disintegration that leads to collective isolation and an inability to organize. 

In his discussion of decolonization, Frantz Fanon points out that colonial violence does not merely tear apart bodies; it also shatters the collective psyche. At the same time, the act of struggle itself can function as an alarm bell that transforms mourning into action. Conversely, the Jewish experience in Europe—and the subsequent organization that followed—demonstrates how documenting reality and producing an archival narrative can prevent isolation and collective amnesia. It is a bitter and deadly experience, yet those living under authoritarian rule must not view their massacre as an exception to history, nor believe—by magnifying it—that salvation will arrive from heaven or from abroad. 

The dominance of an emotional approach leads to neglecting the core issue: the necessity of specialized organization capable of confronting a trained and professional repressive state apparatus. The essence of history shows that if grief is repressed—if there is no space to express it, mourn it, or perform rituals of symbolic reconstruction—it transforms into physical and social complications: chronic anxiety, collective apathy, loss of symbolic capital, and collapse of trust. According to embodied theory, trauma is inscribed in the collective body; unmanaged grief prevents bodies from performing their social functions and weakens their capacity for resistance. 

Throughout Iranian history, layers of painful and emotional experiences have accumulated—sometimes interpreted as sources of resilience, and at other times as obstacles to political action. The Mongol invasion, prolonged periods of occupation and repression, foreign and domestic coups, and repeated political defeats have transformed collective memory into a field of trauma. Yet the more important question is this: why does the dominant reaction sometimes veer toward a kind of mystical generosity or emotional surrender to fate? Why have the Mongol and Arab invasions, or the protests of December 28, become permanent mourning sites in Iranian history? And why have even intellectuals and writers failed to move beyond the first stage of mourning or lead society past it? In this regard, society itself has often been more advanced than its intellectuals. 

Psychosomatic analysis suggests that when institutional structures for mourning are absent—when there is no possibility for symbolic burial, truth documentation, or collective rituals—populations resort to internal mechanisms to regulate emotion: individual mysticism, spiritual silence, or notions of fate and destiny. These are not necessarily signs of moral weakness but rather defense mechanisms. However, they become problematic when they obstruct social organization. When the public sphere is engulfed in emotional demystification, the ability to integrate anger and grief into constructive action weakens. 

From the perspective of liberation philosophy, struggle requires structures capable of reproducing emotional energy in a disciplined manner. Anger and hatred, if not contained within the body, lead either to collective passivity or blind explosions. Intellectuals and segments of the public who immerse themselves in the “sanctification of tragedy” often remain—unconsciously—ignorant of this engineering that transforms mourning into politics. This confusion between defensive spirituality and surrender must be criticized firmly and precisely. 

Why Did We Take So Long? 

Historical pressure and the absence of institutional foundations for struggle have delayed the recognition—by various classes and groups in Iran—of the true nature of dictatorship. This delayed political consciousness stems from two factors: historical-ethnic fragmentation and the division of symbolic capital that prevents early convergence; and the absence of decentralized resistance-based awareness strategies capable of transforming grief into action. 

From the philosophy of struggle, two images of liberation emerge. The first is explosive liberation that seeks immediate purification; the second is organized liberation that prepares social and legal conditions for the transfer of power. The problem is that Iran’s various groups—intellectuals, the middle class, workers, and ethnic communities—each hold their own vision of liberation, rarely agreeing on a shared strategy before engaging in action. This results in the dissipation of initial energy and the transformation of grief into frustration. 

Psychosomatic analysis warns that accumulated grief without symbolic outlets becomes a “dense brain”: bodies remain in survival mode, motivations for action fade, and structural hopes disappear. Thus, rapid extremism in the public sphere—absent material, psychological, and social support mechanisms—is extremely dangerous, increasing the likelihood of repeating cycles of repression and defeat. In recent years, and during the January 2025 massacre, alongside the state’s primary responsibility, the role of opposition forces outside Iran must not be overlooked. These forces contributed to the radicalization of the public sphere without considering the real constraints on the ground. In this sense, opposition and political forces themselves also suffer from emotional flattening of struggle and a lack of organizational thinking. 

When millions witness a crime—and the entire world bears witness—mourning is no longer a private matter but a tangible public field. Collective mourning after mass atrocities differs from individual mourning in several ways: the intensity of horrific images that exacerbate trauma; the absence of an official and recognized mourning process; and the simultaneous pressures of family, economy, and security that limit reconstruction resources. 

This situation can take one of two paths: either transforming mourning into a network of social resistance—where narratives, commemorative rituals, legal documentation, and intergenerational solidarity play crucial roles—or sliding into collective passivity and a “death-oriented mentality” that poses an ongoing threat. The fundamental difference between individual and collective mourning is that a group can either share the burden of pain and restore its capacity to act, or imprison itself in an endless cycle of despair. 

Research shows that viewing images of massacres activates social pain networks and states of suspended consciousness. However, if collective spaces exist to translate these emotions into political and ritual language, this energy can be transformed into organization and demands. Otherwise, the failure to make history becomes dangerous. In reality, groups and movements that called on people to take to the streets—such as the son of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi—bear no responsibility after the catastrophe. 

Beyond the near-total absence of assistance to bereaved families, the intense media coverage of images of the dead deepens collective pain. Society has sunk into a state of severe shock, and no popular groups or institutions were expected to play a role in such conditions. 

Resilience and Liberation Politics 

What global histories of liberation struggles and psychosomatic and liberation philosophy analyses make clear is that political mourning cannot be addressed through therapeutic texts or political slogans alone. What is needed is a multidisciplinary field that accomplishes three things simultaneously—offering simple and objective proposals to a grieving society. People have only themselves. So what is to be done? 

We must accept the body as a site of politics. We must create spaces where bodies can find material and symbolic safety: safe mourning spaces, collective movement-therapy sessions, autonomic regulation exercises to reduce chronic anxiety and restore reconstructive capacity, symbolic advocacy, and truth documentation. Narratives, documents, arts, and collective rituals are essential not only for legal justice but also for symbolic healing. 

Documenting events and holding public memorials are forms of identity reconstruction that prevent collective passivity. Realistic organizational politics—struggle must be structural and based on preconditions: protecting networks, providing livelihood support for bereaved families, and training in material and digital resistance. Such policies transform the energy of anger into sustainable action rather than violent eruption. If these networks of empathy and support are not activated, society faces an even greater catastrophe. 

Hope is not mere optimism; it is the courage of sustained, constructive action. It is learning how to transform anger and grief into collective work, how to rebuild bodies to restore organizational capacity, and how to reclaim narratives to create memory that prevents the repetition of crime. There are signs of this hope—in underground art, in family narratives, and in hidden support networks. The task of liberation politics and social healers is to refine these roots, connect them, and prevent the recurrence of catastrophe—not only to save today, but to build tomorrow.